Media monitoring software for press coverage and AI answers
Media monitoring software finds every online article, blog post and video that names your company, so you see earned coverage without searching for it. MentionRadar monitors news sites, blogs, YouTube and forums every 15 minutes and shows which of those articles AI engines now cite.
- News and blog coverage every 15 minutes
- Reach and sentiment on every article
- Pages cited by AI engines (Growth+)
- Scheduled PDF coverage reports
| Outlet | Headline | Reach | Tone | AI |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Food Business Daily | Northwind Coffee opens roastery for wholesale partners | High | Positive | Cited by AI |
| Retail Brew Journal | Cold brew price war squeezes mid-size roasters | Medium | Negative | Not cited |
| The Morning Grind blog | Five subscription coffees tested side by side | Medium | Positive | Cited by AI |
| City Eats | Northwind cafe returns to the old market hall | Low | Neutral | Not cited |
| Supply Chain Weekly | Bean shipping delays hit three coffee brands | High | Negative | Not cited |
Measuring earned media without a clipping folder
Earned media is the coverage you did not pay for: a trade article about your launch, a blogger comparing you with two rivals, a local news piece that quotes your founder. It is the most credible thing written about a company and the hardest to measure, because it appears on hundreds of sites that never tell you they wrote about you.
Media monitoring software solves the first half of that problem by finding the coverage. MentionRadar searches news sites, blogs, forums, review sites and YouTube for your keywords every 15 minutes on paid plans, removes duplicates of the same story by its normalised address, and matches your brand as a whole word so that "Northwind" does not also collect every "northwinds" weather report. Each article lands in a feed with its outlet, headline, date, link, reach label and sentiment.
The second half is measurement. A list of clips does not tell leadership whether PR is working. Counting coverage per week, splitting it by tone, comparing it with competitors and checking which articles actually travel is what turns monitoring into a number. That comparison against rivals is the core of a share of voice tool, and MentionRadar computes it from the same feed.
There is now a third question PR teams get asked: does this coverage show up when buyers ask an AI engine? Perplexity and Google AI Overviews cite news and trade articles in their answers. On Growth and higher plans MentionRadar records the pages each engine cites for your tracked prompts, so a story that reaches 40,000 readers and also becomes the source for an AI answer is marked as such.
A coverage report that answers the questions leadership asks
Scheduled PDF reports go out weekly or monthly on Growth and higher plans. Agencies send the same report under their own name.
Northwind Coffee
September coverage
Articles
38
+9
Sentiment index
+21
+6
Share of voice
31%
+4 pts
- Top story: roastery opening covered by Food Business Daily, High reach, cited by Perplexity
- Two negative articles about shipping delays, both industry wide, no direct criticism
- Share of voice up against two regional roasters after the wholesale launch
- AI visibility score 64, named in 7 of 15 tracked prompts
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1
How much coverage did we get
Article count for the period with the change against the previous one, split by source type, so a spike from a single syndicated story is visible as one story, not twenty.
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2
Was it good or bad
Sentiment index, calculated as positive minus negative articles divided by all articles, times 100. A score of +21 means positive coverage clearly outweighs negative.
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3
Did we beat the competition
Share of voice on the web compared with the competitors you track, plus the AI share: how many of the latest AI answers name each brand.
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4
Which pieces mattered
The top articles by reach, the negative items worth a response, and the articles AI engines cited when answering your category questions.
What this media monitoring covers, and what it does not
A clear list beats a vague promise of "all media". MentionRadar is an online monitoring product.
| Media type | Covered | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Online news sites and trade press | Yes | Headline, outlet, date, link, visible text, reach label, sentiment |
| Blogs, including newsletters with a public web archive | Yes | The same fields as news, matched on the published page |
| Paywalled articles | Partly | Headline, source, date, link and the publicly visible opening. Full text behind the paywall is not copied |
| YouTube videos and video podcasts | Yes | Title, channel and link when the video matches your keyword |
| Forums, Reddit, Hacker News, review sites, X | Yes | Shown in the same feed, filterable by source type |
| Print newspapers and magazines | No | Covered only when the story is also published online |
| TV and radio broadcasts | No | No transcripts. A specialist broadcast service is needed for that |
Being honest about the limits matters because media monitoring is often bought on the promise of total coverage and judged on the one story it missed. Most print and broadcast stories now have an online version, so the online feed catches the majority of what reaches your buyers. If your industry depends on local radio, pair MentionRadar with a broadcast service rather than expecting one tool to do both. If you are comparing us with a full communications suite, the page on Meltwater pricing and alternatives shows what buyers report paying and where each tool is the better fit, and the same goes for Cision pricing and alternatives.
Teams that need conversations as much as coverage use the same workspace as a social listening tool, with Reddit and X next to the press. For research across many brands and markets, read about MentionRadar as a media intelligence platform, and for the AI half of the picture see AI search visibility.
Questions about media monitoring software
What is the difference between media monitoring and social listening?
Media monitoring focuses on published coverage: news articles, trade press, blogs, newsletters and video. Social listening focuses on conversations: Reddit threads, forum posts and posts on X. In practice PR teams need both, which is why MentionRadar puts them in one feed and lets you filter by source type.
Does MentionRadar monitor print newspapers, TV or radio?
No. MentionRadar monitors online sources: news sites, blogs, forums, Reddit, Hacker News, review sites, YouTube and X. Most print and broadcast stories also appear online, and YouTube covers a large share of video and podcast coverage. If you need transcripts of local radio, you need a specialist broadcast service alongside it.
Can I see paywalled articles?
You see the headline, source, date, link and the part of the article that is publicly visible. Full text behind a paywall is not copied, which also keeps your team within the publisher terms. The headline and opening paragraph are usually enough to judge tone and decide whether to read further.
How does media monitoring connect to AI search?
AI engines such as Perplexity and Google AI Overviews cite news and trade articles when they answer questions about a category. On Growth and higher plans MentionRadar records those cited URLs, so you can see which pieces of coverage actually shape what AI engines say about you and your rivals.
Can I send coverage reports to leadership or clients?
Growth includes scheduled PDF reports that go out weekly or monthly with mention volume, sentiment, top articles and share of voice. The Agency plan adds white-label reports with your agency name and read-only access for clients. Every plan exports mentions to CSV.
How much does media monitoring software cost here?
Starter is $24 a month billed yearly or $49 month to month, with 3 keywords and 5,000 mentions a month. Growth is $74 a month yearly with 10 keywords and 30,000 mentions. All prices are public on the pricing page and every plan is bought and cancelled online.
Find out where your company was covered this month
Scan your brand and see recent news, blog and forum coverage plus an AI engine check, before you create an account.